From whence my words flow

an origin story of sorts

some childhood favorites

Words have always been there, I think. From the treasured stories read to me as a child to the ones that spill out of me as I try to make sense of the world. The page has been there to capture what is inside me or to help me escape it or a time.

My own words were born of a need to express emotions I didn't know how to speak. I learned early that there was no place for my feelings, so I tucked them into the pages of my diaries.

a collection of my childhood diaries (including one in which my mother wrote the night of my birth)

As a teenager all of my big feelings about love and society and the environment poured out into poetry. I didn’t know how to say these things out loud, so I wrote them instead. The page still feels like the place I’m best able to express myself.

teenage angst about societal expectations

friends, this was printed on a dot matrix printer, who remembers tearing off the edges full of holes?

Words also sailed across the sea, calling to me. Voices of my ancestors saying you will know us by our words and our customs. Välkommen! Kom och danse. Somehow their words sound like home, so I keep learning. Tack så mycket - one of the phew phrases I ever heard my grandmother say. My tongue learns to dance around words like smultronställe.

Words have a way of cracking me open and taking me beyond myself. A powerful poem, a great book, a desperate plea. Perhaps this is evidence that sometimes their source lies outside of us.

When I think about the source of my words, an image of a pool deep within a cave comes to mind. It has shown up many times in my imagination as a place of self-discovery, a place of healing, a place of wisdom, and a place where purpose is revealed.  It is the place where I've met my inner wisdom in the shape of a black cat. It feels like a sacred place.

In the Hebrew Bible God speaks creation into being. Words spoken bring forth sky, waters, land, etc. This is evidence enough for me of the power and sacredness that words can hold. It also says that everything God created was called "good"¹. May my words also speak good into the world. I think when I can tap into my source in that cave I'm on the right track. My words feel sacred. They are captured in their rawest form before they are tossed out into the world and weathered by the storms of humanity.

Some days it feels like I can’t reach the cave, I’m outside trying to scoop words out of a tumultuous rapids. Over and over again I place words on the page and they say a thing, but they are lackluster. I seek the magic of the cave. I hear from writers more talented than me that this comes of the practice, so here I am, practicing.

What role do words play in your life? If you are a writer, where is your source and how do you tap in? I’d love to know.

---

This piece was inspired by one of the exercises in Beth Kempton's River of Words course.

1. after I wrote this I was told by someone that the word for “good” here could also be translated as “beautiful” and I thought that was just right.